The Cygnus spacecraft, launched on July 13, has just reached the International Space Station and was captured by the robotic arm Canadarm2. Commander Steve Swanson and flight engineer Alexander Gerst started the slow maneuver that will move Cygnus until it docks with the Station’s Harmony node after about two hours.

The Orb-2 mission is basically accomplished because the Cygnus spacecraft can’t land and when it comes back into Earth’s atmosphere it will disintegrate. For this reason, it will be used to get rid of pieces of hardware that is faulty or that can’t be used any longer on the International Space Station: they will be loaded on the Cygnus and will disintegrate along with it.

This final use of the Cygnus “Janice Voss” spacecraft is relatively simple and will probably take place around the end of August. In these cases, an exact date for the departure of a cargo spacecraft is never scheduled because it also depends on other tasks with higher priority.

Tomorrow the crew of the International Space Station should open the hatch of the Cygnus spacecraft and at that point the cargo will be gradually brought to the Station. Subsequently, everything that has now become junk will be loaded on the Cygnus and the spacecraft will be ready for departure. These operations will slowly go on for a few weeks.

This is the second of eight official missions under Orbital Sciences’ contract with NASA for resupplying the International Space Station. One of the most important technological innovations was testing the TriDAR (Triangulation and LIDAR Automated Rendezvous and Docking) system for the approach to the station. Today it has been used in backup mode while the LIDAR system normally used was still the main one. Starting with next mission, the TriDAR should become the main system in the approach to the Station.

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